Hey all! As we
head into the Easter weekend, I am wishing all of you a very happy one! Below
are the excerpts of a talk I had given this last month!
“If you are a
Christian or it’s just that you have hung around a few Christian friends, you
would’ve noticed that they have two main festivals they celebrate right through
the year. One of course is Christmas, which is the day that Jesus was born and
the other is this one Easter. Now this might be a little difficult to believe
but this is the day that Jesus who was crucified and buried on a Friday rose
from the dead! It’s sometimes referred to as Resurrection Sunday because they
believe that Jesus was resurrected from the dead.
Now before we
get into what I want to talk about today, I want to ask a question:
What
would you do if you had to take punishment for something you didn’t do?
I remember this
incident that happened when I was in my first standard. This one day the
teacher had asked us to get new pencils to start writing in our books. We four
friends were seated together and all of us had brand new pencils with the
eraser on the top end! We took it out in class and one of my friends (he was
the leader of our gang!) looked at me and simply bit the eraser off the pencil.
I stared in disbelief because I had no idea that one could do that. He got
excited and started talking to all of us about what he did. I asked my friend
the pencil to see it closely and was looking at it when before I knew, my
teacher came up to me and asked to stand up. I stood up with the pencil which
had no rubber at the end. She said, “Why are you talking in class?” Then she
saw the pencil in my hand and said, “Look at what you’ve done! You chewed off
the rubber off this new pencil!” I replied to it saying, “No, madam! I didn’t
talk, I was just asking him to show his pencil and this is not my pencil this
is his!” And I looked around at my friend who by now had taken my new pencil
and was pretending that it was his. The teacher looked at him then back at me
and said, “He’s got his own. Now you have started to lie also!” I stared in
utter disbelief again with nothing to say and then she said, “You stand up on
the table as a punishment. You are distracting others.” I said almost
immediately in response, “I didn’t do anything wrong!” To which she replied,
“You are talking in class, distracting the others also and say that you didn’t do
anything wrong.” I looked at my gang of friends and all of them were seemingly
doing their work! I felt like I had taken punishment for something I had not
done!
Why would I want to take
punishment for something I had not done!
Fast forward a
few years, I think I was in the sixth or seventh standard. There was this guy
in my class who wanted to be my friend. I didn’t like him all that much but he
was always around trying to seek my attention and I would try and keep him at a
distance. I’ll never forget he would get me a lot of free stuff- small toys and
chocolates etc. Despite me telling him not to, he just wouldn’t stop. There was
this one time when I got really late to class. The teacher was already in and I
was at the door waiting to get in. She scolds me saying, “You can stand outside
the class since you are late.” Both of us were facing each other and that’s
when this friend of mine stood up and said, “Teacher, he’s late because of me.”
Both of us looked at him and I was wondering in my mind as to what was he doing?
The teacher also surprised looked at him and asked why. To be honest with you,
I don’t remember the story he made up but all I remember is that as soon as he
said it I kept thinking there’s no way the teacher was going to accept that.
But she looked at me and then back at him and said, “Well, someone has to take
the punishment and since you say you are responsible then you take it.” He
looked like he was fine and then she asked him to get his diary. I was shocked
when the teacher asked for the diary because you see back then if the teacher
wrote a red letter note in your diary then you would have to take it back to
your parents and get it signed. That was the worst punishment that anyone could
get because then the news would get home. My friend without any change on his
face gave the teacher his diary and she wrote a red letter note. As soon as
class got over, I went over and asked him, “Why did you do that? Now you have
to get the signature from your parents.” He replied, “That’s okay Danny. After
all, what are friends for?” Let me tell you, I couldn’t sleep that night. The
only picture that kept running in my mind was what could have been happening at
his home. His angry parents yelling at him and getting it badly for something
he didn’t do. The next day of course I got into class and just ran to meet him
as soon as he came in. I asked him as to what happened. He smiled back at me
and said it again, “It’s alright Danny, after all what are friends for?” We
became very close friends after that day because he took the punishment for me.
He took the punishment for something he
hadn’t done.
Why
would anyone take up punishment for something they didn’t do?
My friend here
took the punishment for me even though he had done nothing wrong because he
wanted to be my friend. He wanted to get close to me. To this day I can’t
figure out why he did it. I hadn’t done anything for him that I could remember.
You see, when we
look at life, as we grow up, it doesn’t become about who chewed the rubber or
who came late to class anymore. As we grow the things that we did wrong grows
even more. We do more than what we used to do when we were little kids. We get
into all sort of wrong addictions and relationships, we have lied and cheated,
and we’ve stolen and done things that cannot be spoken about. It leaves us feeling
guilty, condemned, and ashamed. We wish we had never done those things in the
first place.
But the sad truth
is that at the end of the day, we know that someone ought to take the punishment. Someone’s got to pay the
price. Then there are those who decide to pay the price themselves. Some people
throw money away thinking that maybe that could make it right. There are those
who try to make right by doing more wrongs. But we all know that it’s not the
answer. That no matter how much money we put in or how many more wrongs we do
to make one wrong right, we will always be left with that guilt and
condemnation feeling. The final resort is suicide. Majority of the suicide
cases that are reported are due to feeling of hopelessness or that inability to
live with what they’ve done or that they did not make the mark. Again only a
few are willing to commit suicide, but then out of every 10 people you talk to,
around 8 to 9 of them would have at least considered suicide once or twice in
their lifetime!
But here’s a
thought: What if someone were ready to take up the punishment for the wrongs
that we did? What if someone were willing to pay the price? What if we didn’t
have to pay the price and never had to live with the feeling of guilt and
condemnation that came along with it? But instead we could receive forgiveness
and grace.
Who is this person that would take up the punishment?
His name is
Jesus and He is God’s own Son: God’s only Son. It says that God piled all
of our wrongs on Him because of which we are in the right today.
But why did He
do it? Why would anyone want to take up punishment for something they didn’t
do?
Because He loved
us; because He wanted to have a relationship with us; He wanted to become close
friends with us. The question lies as to would we want to?
I want to close
with this story of my two year old son.
I love
babysitting John when Anu’s got work. This one time I took him down below our
flat to play. There’s this ditch between the compound walls of our flat
building and the next. So whilst we were down playing, John noticed this
completely weathered out ball in one corner. It looked quite dirty, so I didn’t
want him picking it up but his attention was on it and once a two year old
catches their attention on anything, you better have a good alternative to
distract. I couldn’t do anything to distract him so I let him pick the ball and
we went over to the compound wall. I told him to throw it into the ditch which
he playfully did. Then for the next few minutes we kept looking at it and then
that was over.
A few days later
Anu takes John down and this time there were the neighbourhood kids of his age
that were playing with him. One of the neighbour boys had a ball that he was
playing with. As they were playing, John picks it up, heads over to the ditch
and threw the ball in without any hesitation. Everyone was surprised and had no
idea why he did that! (I wonder to this day why!) But Anu scolded him for doing
so since that was not his ball. Then John felt bad and by what Anu said, he had
this sort of guilty feeling all over him. He pushed Anu to see if there were
any means to get the ball back. He tried walking all the way to the end of the
wall but there was no way he could get the ball back. Then Anu suggested to him
that we could give one of his balls. Surprisingly John was ready to do that!
So they went up
to the flat, picked out one his balls and headed down. Then without having
anyone to tell or nudge him, much to everyone’s surprise, John went to this boy
and gave him the ball. The boy was overjoyed and John was very happy that he
was able to do it.
Now here’s the
thing: John had done something wrong and he couldn’t fix it by himself and the
only way to make the wrong right was by giving him a new ball. John of course
couldn’t pay for a new ball himself. But get this: his father paid for it, the full price.
I paid the full
price for it, he was able to make his wrong right and go on without carrying
the feeling of guilt or condemnation.
This is what
Easter is all about. God, our Father paid the full price for every wrong we
ever did. Our wrongs have been made right and we can stand with a clean slate
without having any feelings of guilt or condemnation because it’s all been
taken care of. Would we be ready to get close to this Jesus?
Happy
Easter!
